Ethiopia - TREATISE AND DIS-COURSE ON CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

  Ethiopia

TREATISE AND DISCOURSE ON CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

Costantinos BT Costantinos, PhD

Part I:

DISCOURSE ON CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY

Part I: discourse on culture and democracy, Part II - Civil Society, Culture, Political Openness and Democracy, Part III –

ethnic self-determination, operative history and avant-garde ideology

Abstract

There is little appreciation of the dynamics of culture, as an ever-evolving set of norms and institutions, influenced by external and internal factors. High or low culture, it is disingenuous to base the case for an alternative view of democracy on uniformity of cultures across the states and nations when the case cannot be sustained even for a single state.    Within the Abyssinian cultural-ideological history, although Christianity and Islam have co-existed since the turn of the first millennium, the heritage of the Orthodox Church permeates the art, architecture, literature and moral perception of the population. If religious orthodoxy was a prime preoccupation in former times, ideological rectitude has been the essence of political life in more recent times. Questions however arise: does cultural democracy enter transition processes in Ethiopia as an external ideology, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs and values? in the case of Ethiopia in particular, do ideas of democratization come into play in total opposition to, or in co-operation with historic national values and sentiments? This is explained by process openness or transparency can be analyzed at two distinct but closely related levels: political agency and ideology. The former refers to the full range of significant participants and their activities and relations in political reform. Participants include potential as well as actual and international as well as domestic actors. The latter might relate to complexes of ideas, beliefs, goals and issues that can come into competitive and co-operative play in democratic reform.

Key words: political agency, ideology, culture, cultural democracy,

1.       Introduction

With the groundswell of political consciousness and opportunities for political change that has emerged in Ethiopia, the discourse on cultural democracy can and must take place to ensure the sustainability of democracy. It is also a challenge, because, for a third time in a generation, we are faced with the daunting task of building up new and equitable relationships; and hence the litmus test to our ability to participate in reshaping the future of a nation. It is also an opportunity for Ethiopians to marshal their experience and knowledge to play a constructive role in national development. Ethiopians live in an era where the environment has been marginalised to a point where essential life support systems seem to have collapsed. Cultural make-up, community value and organizational sub-systems of a once robust civil society have been dismantled. This has bred a socio-entity that has wildly spun off their axis - bitterly compromising traditional latitudes of survival that civil society curved as niche for so long. 

The paper seeks to explore the changing nature of international debates about culture and human rights in recent years and the implications of cultural democracy for the prospects of rights; amid the turbulence of the divisions that marked the debate in the Cold War period. This was dominated by the great ideological differences between liberal-capitalism and socialism, and in which the contest was seen to lie in the competing claims of the primacy of civil and political rights on the one hand and economic and social rights on the other. 

At the heart of the controversy was the role of the market in the organization of economy and the well-known critique by Marx of what he called the bourgeois rights. He also claimed to have established a better framework for rights in which economic and social rights were ensured to all people, enabling them to live a life of dignity. Abyssinian Socialist states, including Ethiopia, therefore analyzed rights in class terms.  Leaders hovered uneasily between these opposed views, reluctant to disengage from the rhetoric of rights which had been invoked extensively in the colonial period, but also conscious of the difficulties of establishing political authority, especially in multiethnic societies, and increasingly driven to restrictions of rights.  ‘Developmentalism’ became a sort of ideology, for both socialist regimes and those which operated market economies under the hegemony of the west, with its undertones of control and authority.

The end of the Cold War changed dramatically the context for the discourse of culture and human rights; widely represented as the victory of human right and Western (Mainly American) democracy. The discourse achieved a high salience.  The west defined its mission the extension of rights and democracy to other parts of the world... followed by its dominance of Western culture. Soon Coca Cola and Hollywood became the icons of the new ‘Cultural Revolution’. Today, implicitly or explicitly, the liberal model is often taken as the acme of democratic governance. The target that a host of other Abyssinian countries set themselves in the process of democratization is the attainment of institutions and practices that have been the basic ingredients of our democratic tradition. These include above all multi-partyism, independent judiciary, free press, and popular sovereignty expressed through the legislature. But keen observers have not been oblivious to the limits of this declared paragon of democracy, with an “alternative, participatory vision of democracy” to achieve what has come to be known as the “empowerment” of the common man.[i] To a continent that has not been able to attain even the formal aspects of democracy, limited as they might be, this groping for a deeper edition of it may sound as a bit of a luxury.

2.      Culture and politics: an introduction

This is no place for an extended inquiry into the constituents of culture.  However, in the present debates, culture is treated historically.  The exegesis of ancient religious or similar texts is undertaken more in the nature of an archaeological exercise than a serious examination of how and by what values people live now.  ‘Culture’ has become a social construction with little relevance to reality.  In the same breath as the strength and virtues of cultural values are extolled there is a lament for the passing of old ways and the dominance of decadent western culture, which prides itself on its oriental traditions, which enables a parent to sue her/his children for parental neglect—the  totally un-Confucian legalization of duties!. Thus is filial loyalty measured in dollars and cents exacted, through a judicial process that would shock Confucius9.

2.1. What Is "Cultural Democracy"?  

The concept of cultural democracy comprises a set of related commitments: protecting and promoting cultural diversity, and the right to culture for everyone in our society and around the world; encouraging active participation in community cultural life; enabling people to participate in policy decisions that affect the quality of our cultural lives; and assuring fair and equitable access to cultural resources and support. Much more can and will be said throughout Webster's World about the idea of cultural democracy and how it plays out in practice; but these principles are its essence. If you'd like more information about the origins of the idea of cultural democracy, check out the essays in the core resources section.

Ideology

Psyche

Faith

Literature

Issues

The Arts

CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

Landscape

Agency

Action

History

Policy

2.2.Culture as a Realm of Action:

Since culture is our human creation, it is always subject to change. The powers-that-be would like us to think of culture as a given -- that whether we like it or not, we ordinary people can't change it in any significant way. We are awash in information about the enormity of the world's problems, and this can be disabling. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of racism, poverty, violence and other oppressive forces, we tend to go passive -- or to strike out in usually futile individual acts of rage. Thus the tyranny of those who benefit from the status quo is maintained.

Cultural democracy is therefore a deeply radical idea. It is the ultimate extension of the idea of democracy: that each one of us, each community, each cultural minority has rights that deserve respect, and that each must have a voice in the vital decisions that affect the quality of our lives. No one who commands a disproportionate share of power in the world is happy to hear this idea put forward, for it demands that they share this power with those who are locked out by the current order: better to keep us confused and divided. Cultural democracy inspires a vision of humanity which embraces us all. Each of us is as complex and fascinating as the multiple factors and influences which have shaped our own identities. Each of us is creative, gifted and potentially powerful. Our communities are creative organisms that dynamically change in response to the appearance of new people, ideas and circumstances. Cultural democracy calls forth our most loving selves, illuminates places where healing is needed, and challenges us to develop the best in ourselves, to be respectful of the harmonious interrelations of all life on the planet.

Cultural Democracy is not just about ideas, though. It's also about action. Despite the depressing news brought to us by the mainstream media, people all over the world are acting on their hopeful visions for themselves and their communities. We want Webster's World to grow to incorporate them all. You will find many practical suggestions here -- community projects, organizing campaigns, theoretical explorations grounded in activist politics -- which reveal promising ways of remaking the world according to the values of cultural democracy. There is little appreciation of the dynamics of culture, as an ever evolving set of norms and institutions, influenced by external and internal factors.  There is high culture and low culture, the cultures of the aristocracy and the peasants, the culture of the military and the culture of universities (it is striking how closely the armies of eastern states follow the military culture of the west).  It is disingenuous to base the case for an alternative view of rights on a uniformity of cultures across the states and nations of a whole continent when the case cannot be sustained even for a single state.

Moreover, close connections between technology and culture are disregarded as also the effect of the market on the community.  It is not as if these governments are not a War of changes/globalisation which undermine the traditional values of their societies shows that it is not these values but something else that they are afraid of.  Human rights serve—to some extent—to mark off the public from the private, and to establish a sphere of autonomy where the government may not interfere without great justification.  This sphere is a threat to the presentations of governments to an all pervasive regulation of society.10 Another issue is ‘who interprets and speaks for the culture’? The current debates are greatly impoverished because on both sides the protagonists are politicians and diplomats (although very recently the situation has changed with more academics becoming involved). Government leaders who seek to represent eastern culture are themselves steeped in western ways, its rationality and this worldliness’.  They are incapable of discovering whatever connections there may be between culture and rights/duties.

I do not deny that cultural factors influence one’s view of rights, but culture is dynamic, not static, and responds to changing material conditions.  It is therefore not surprising that some features that are today claimed to characterise eastern societies have been present in cultures throughout the world at different periods of history.  No is ‘culture’ homogenous throughout society; particularly today—the result in large part of renationalisation—societies are marked by sharp distinction and discontinuities.  Just as an example, in many new states, the culture of universities, armed forces and bureaucracies is primarily ‘modern’, even western, while those of large segments of their compatriots is rooted in a different political economy.  Diplomats across the world who earnestly and bitterly quarrel over the universality and relativism of rights belong to the same culture, the product of somewhat privilege background, university education imbibing similar sciences and methods, more at home in cocktail circuits than in the heat and dust of their countries.  And similarly their masters, the politicians, live in a common culture driven by hunger for power and operating through intrigue and corruption.

Implicit in the above argument is that perceptions of human rights are influenced by one’s place in society, so that a society may not have a uniform view of rights.  The interests of hegemonic groups dominate the perception of rights, establishing for them the claims of universalism; weaker sections develop their own modes of resistance to the hegemonic view, and their alternative view of rights.  Thus interests of hegemonic groups dominate the perception of rights, establishing for them the claims of universalism; weaker sections develop their own modes of resistance to the hegemonic view, and their alternative view of rights. Thus perceptions of rights—identified as class interests—cut across societies (women, gays, trade unionists, etc. in east and west share somewhat similar views on rights).  There is no common core of rights that hegemonic groups promote—but with the increasing role of the market across the world, property rights are valued more than for example, the right of free speech (with commercial speech and information given a higher status than political discourse).  The oppressed value more the rights of association and participation.

Current debates, because of their political context, are unlikely to establish the cultural foundations of rights.  Culture no doubt influences one’s view of the world and appropriate roles/relationships, but these differences do not necessarily connote variations in the notion of rights.  Although rights do reflect culture in some measure, the relationship between the two is complex.  Traditionally rights have been ideas/instruments to fight culture—in the west as well as the east.  The ‘public culture’ of the east has largely assimilated ‘western’ values. At the outset, a study on the cultural democracy in Abyssinia in itself poses serious threats to both the incumbents and the opposition as such in-depth look into social and political process spawn people's empowerment and may result in articulating the problems of the transition much more than what the incumbent government or the opposition may be willing to admit. While this is the general truth surrounding the transition study there are specific impediments. Cultural democracy and good governance presents serious problems because of short-comings and limitations of what the cultural democracy is. 

3.      Culture and the ideological heritage

3.1.    Religious challenges  

Although Christianity and Islam have co-existed in Ethiopia since the turn of the first millennium, Ethiopia has customarily been known as a Christian country (or in the more dramatic rendering, "an island of Christianity"). This was because, enjoying royal patronage, Christianity became the dominant religion and the dominant culture. As such, it has left an indelible stamp on the history of the country and the psyche of its adherents. The heritage of the Orthodox Church permeates the art, architecture, literature and moral perception of that section of the population which has played the dominant role in the country's history. Church and State existed through the centuries in a symbiotic relationship, the former providing legitimacy, the latter protection and endowments.

While there was little fundamental conflict between Churches and State, the Church itself has been rent often times by internal controversy. Which was the real orthodox doctrine of the Orthodox Church was not always so easy to determine. Sectarianism was therefore an endemic syndrome in the Ethiopian Church. The high point in doctrinal controversy was reached in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the Church was divided into warring factions espousing divergent interpretations of the nature of Christ.[ii] Another significant feature of Ethiopian Christianity has been the underlying tension between the Church establishments on the one hand and monks and hermits on the other arraigning the former for tainting itself too much with earthly dispositions, including material possessions and political involvement.[iii] A streak of millenarianism, conjuring apocalyptic visions of a perfect new world rising from the ashes of the old, has thus run through Ethiopian Christianity.[iv] After 1991, this tension which had been a recurrent theme of Ethiopian religious history has assumed a radical rift between the Church establishment and the congregations, who find the sermon of a hermit more edifying than the benediction of the patriarch.

3.2.   Revolutionary heritage

If religious orthodoxy was a prime preoccupation in former times, ideological rectitude has been the essence of Ethiopian political life in more recent times. This began with the adoption at the turn of the 1960s of Marxism-Leninism by the student movement as the panacea for Ethiopia's ills. The parallels with Russia are striking in this regard. Just as in Russia, in Ethiopia too, an almost imperceptible transition was made from religious orthodoxy to ideological dogmatism without the attenuating influence of an intervening period of free liberal thinking. Marxism, in its Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist editions, has been the dominant ideology of first the student movement and then of the left as a whole since the late 1960s. It began in the mid-60s with the emergence of a small but determined group of initiates nick-named "the Crocodiles". Its organizational skills as well as its faith in the veracity of the doctrine it has come to espouse, which contrasted sharply with the prevarication of the liberal majority, assured it ideological and organizational ascendancy by the beginning of the 1970s.[1] This ascendancy dictated the character both of the 1974 revolution and the post-74 regimes. In other words, the tone and the parameters of the revolutionary process were set by the students. The Dergue had no option but initiate itself into the intellectual discourse began by the students if it wished to stay in power. Through a long and painful process of ideological schooling, the Dergue was able to supplant the left and assume the mantle of authentic standard-bearer of Marxism-Leninism. Mengistu adopted the rhetoric of the left and its recipe for the organization of the vanguard party to establish the most total control of society that any Ethiopian government has been able to achieve. 

The coalition forces, which supplanted the Dergue in May 1991, had more authentic Marxist-Leninist credentials, its leaders having been members of the student movement in the early 1970s. Another difference between the Dergue and the coalition forces is in the alacrity with which the latter sized up the international situation in the late 1980s and effected a formal transformation from a communist organization into a broad front fighting for "peace and democracy”. The Marxist-Leninist ideological baggage informed the post-74 revolutionary process and continues to inform the post-91 transition process in at least three important ways: the premium placed on organization, the pervasiveness of a commanding economic policy, and the perception of what has come to be known as the national question. We shall treat each of these three aspects in turn. The swing to the left in the late 1960s was attended by the adoption of a presumably well-nigh infallible recipe for organization, in its Leninist variant for the urban setting and its Maoist one for the rural. At this time the Tigrayan Nation Progressive Union (TNPU) was formed "in a very narrow way (it) started to grow and develop beyond its scope. Nevertheless, it remained passive and its members were promoting different outlooks; therefore, it could not fulfill the contemporary political responsibility. Later, in 1974 as the question of political organization become an urgent question of the struggle, a few students with Marxist-Leninist outlook called a meeting of Tigrayan students in the university and agreed to establish a strong political organization which can carry out the heavy burdens of the time. The main task if this organization became the creation of fertile ground for armed struggle."[v]

A cardinal feature of the recipe was the principle of "democratic centralism" with the accent decidedly on the centralism than on the democracy. This recipe was first tried at the student level, notably with the establishment of the University Students Union of Addis Ababa (USUAA) in 1966. The Dergue discovered its utility and applied it to achieve the highest level of mobilization - and regimentation - of society ever recorded in Ethiopia.[vi] Utilizing the same organizational recipe, the rural guerrilla forces smashed the Dergue's gigantic military machine and seized state power in May 1991. The same ideological baggage has permeated economic policy since 1974. It had to its credit the most revolutionary land reform proclamation ever promulgated in the Abyssinian continent. On the debit side, however, it ushered in a stifling control of the national economy by the state. In the rural sector, aside from the state control of land, it was characterized by measures ranging from tight control of agricultural marketing to ambitious programs of collectivization, villagisation, and resettlement. In the urban setting, it involved the nationalization of urban land and of financial institutions and state control of wholesale and retail trade through its marketing corporations and the urban dweller associations. The disastrous consequences of such all-pervasive control of the national economy are all too manifest to require elaboration. But arguably the most potent ingredient of the Marxist-Leninist ideological baggage has been the principle of the right of nations to self-determination up to and including secession. The principle was first aired at a student gathering in Christmas Hall (the main student dining hall of Addis Ababa University) on a fateful November evening of 1969. The vector of this pregnant idea was the intrepid if rather adventurist stalwart of the student movement, Wallelign Mekonnen. 

In 1970, the Algerian-based student exiles gave the student movement a more comprehensive rendition of the problem under the pseudonym of Tilahun Takele.[vii] The term gospel is used here not without reason. For it amounted to little more than a literal application of Leninist rhetoric and Stalinist dogma - rich in polemics but woefully short on empirical data. And yet, the principle - and especially its fateful rider, "up to and including secession" - became the true test of any self-respecting Ethiopian Marxist. There is no doubt that, particularly with respect to the oppressed and exploited southern half of the country, the principle addressed a fundamental problem.[viii] But in the rush to conform, few asked the crucial questions such as: What are the nationalities and nations of Ethiopia? How did they evolve over time and what was the nature of their mutual interaction? How precisely do they exercise their right of self-determination? In the objective economic circumstances in which Ethiopia found itself, need one push the principle to its extreme limit of secession? In the end, therefore, the principle amounted to little more than a legitimising instrument for any organised national elite that took up arms against the central government.[ix]

 

4.      Governance traditions

Implicitly or explicitly, the Western liberal democratic model is often taken as the acme of democratic governance. The target that a host of African countries set themselves in the process of democratisation is the attainment of institutions and practices that have been the basic ingredients of the Western democratic tradition. These include above all multi-partyism, independent judiciary, free press, and popular sovereignty expressed through the legislature.

To a country that has not been able to attain even the formal aspects of democracy, limited as they might be, this groping for a deeper edition of it may sound as a bit of a luxury. On the other hand, the strengthening of civil society that underpins the alternative vision of democracy is germane to the discussion of cultural democracy process in Abyssinia. For the ultimate hope to salvage the imperilled process seems to lie precisely in such strengthening of civil society. Moreover, a direct and participatory form of democracy is presumed to be the hallmark of the perceived Abyssinian pre-modern democratic tradition, more specifically of ‘village democracy’. The pre-modern past has been portrayed in diametrically opposite fashion: as an age of barbarism and arbitrary rule (by colonialists), and as one of egalitarianism (by Abyssinian nationalists).[x] Both positions apparently suffer from selective presentation of the facts. The former position needs not detain us here. The latter we have to address. It is obvious that the idea of a uniform and Pan-Abyssinian egalitarian socio-political system throughout pre-colonial Abyssinia is an untenable position. In the first place, Abyssinia has seen empires (Aksum) and military dictatorships (Tewodros, Yohannes, Menelik, Mengistu…) as well as for their time village democracies in pre-modern times (Boran). Secondly, even the so-called village democracies (Boran) had either an unmistakable stamp of gerontocracy about them or were quite often disrupted by the intervention of powerful individuals or groups relying on military prowess or invoking spiritual powers.[xi]

 

Ultimately, one is also forced to question the relevance of a pre-colonial socio-political organisation to the contemporary Abyssinian reality. For it is inconceivable that Abyssinia can go back to its past, however idyllic it may be imagined to be. One writer has even gone so far as to say that all attempts to relate the contemporary question of democratization to pre-colonial Abyssinian society smacks either of naiveté or of ideological manipulation.[xii] At any rate, it is self-evident that Abyssinia in the 1990s is a much different proposition than the Abyssinia of the 1890s or earlier. So much has changed in territorial configuration, social and economic differentiation and the international alignment of forces. Contemporary Abyssinia can only build on the cumulative legacy of its pre- modern, colonial and post- modern experience.

It is a telling comment on the abstract nature of the whole exercise that the two major nationalities/nations of Ethiopia, the Amhara and the Oromo, have been cultural categories rather than territorially defined political entities. Yet such was the power of the theory that even the Dergue was forced to make some half-hearted concessions to it by establishing autonomous units in its People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. After 1991, the student theory of the 1960s and 1970s has become official doctrine. The absence of any critical re-examination of the principle has meant that Ethiopia is now virtually set to be the laboratory for its testing out, irrespective of the disastrous lessons of the Soviet and Yugoslav experience. While within the realm of ideology, a few words on Islam are appropriate. As indicated above, Islam was relegated to a clearly secondary status in the past. A major handicap that Ethiopian Muslims had suffered was their exclusion from the hereditary usufruct right to land (rest) prevalent in the north. As a result, the Muslims had traditionally been forced to concentrate on trade. A confused attempt by Lej Iyasu (1913-16), the designated heir of Menelik, to redress the imbalance ended in his deposition.[xiii]

During the period of Fascist Italian occupation (1936‑ 41), the new rulers, in line with their policy of undermining the political prerogatives and cultural advantages of the Christian Amhara ruling class, introduced policies favourable to Islam. These are recognition of Sharia law, the use of the Arabic language for instruction and in the media, and the building of mosques, including the Grand Mosque in Addis Ababa. Most of these policies were reversed after the restoration of the Haile Selassie regime in 1941.[xiv] A more enduring, and this time indigenous, wind of change began to blow in 1974, heralded by a mammoth demonstration of the Muslim population of the capital, with the enthusiastic support of several Christians. The ultimate result of this popular demonstration was the official recognition of Islam as a national religion, as made explicit in the official celebration of three Muslim holidays and the ascription of equal protocol status to the patriarch and the imam. In essence, therefore, what has taken place after 1974, amplified after 1991, is not so much the dis-establishment of the Church as the co-establishment of both Christianity and Islam. 

The above picture of classical Ethiopian society is admittedly grim. With such a background, the prospects for democratisation are bound to appear dim. What are the redeeming features of Ethiopian history that can dispel the gloomy picture somewhat? What are the "bright spots" in this rather unremitting image of authoritarianism and orthodoxy? It is easier to ask such questions than to answer them. For the counter-currents strike one by their futility or ephemeral character or their not so decisive import on the political instance. Even if and when such counter-currents assume a more durable shape, they do not always dispel the gloom cast by the two millstones of Ethiopian history. With this note of caution, let us turn to look at these counter-currents, focusing on three of them - proprietary and juridical rights, regional challenges, constitutionalism, and the press. The inability of the Emperor Haile Sellassie's regime to accommodate regional autonomy that the separate, even if short, history of Eritrea dictated and the UN guaranteed settlement of 1950 provoked the armed struggle that ultimately resulted in the independence of Eritrea. Initially, progressive forces in Ethiopia espoused the Eritrean cause as part of the democratic struggle against Emperor Haile Sellase. As we have seen above, the student movement and the left even tried to subsume it under the Marxist-Leninist recipe for the national question. The Dergue's era exacerbated the whole situation and recast the question in the starkest of terms: forcible union versus unqualified independence. Now that independence has been achieved, the question still lingers on how much the achievement of that objective has promoted the cause of democracy. Even if the authoritarian character of the liberation movements can be explained by the exigencies of the armed struggle, it remains a matter of considerable doubt whether a genuinely democratic society can be built in independent Eritrea on those foundations.

5.      Civil Society Organizations and local governance regimes - The Gada - a case digest

The Gada System, being the basis for all social, economic and political relations in Oromo society, is the most pervasive institution among the Boran pastoralist of southern Ethiopia. It is a function of three sub-system based on differentiation of society in time. These sub-systems are the Gogessa (patri-class), Luba (generation set) and the age-grade. Gada[xv] is politically the most important grade. At this stage Lubas assume political power while three other councils leave office. During this period the members of Gada councils visit all parts of Boran territory to meet with the people, perform ritual ceremonies at various shrines, settle disputes and convene assemblies. After eight years in service the council members retire and enter the Yaba grades handing over power to the incoming Roba Dori grade. Yuba is the retirement stage and constitutes five grades. The first four are the most active life when the men act as advisers to their successors. This is between ages 54 and 85. Beginning 86 years of age through 93 is the last grade of Yuba stage marked by Gadamoji rites as the man enters and leaves his last phase of service as the most senior advisor. Upon completion of the Gadamogi grade he retires as Jarsa (old man) and is cared for. Other institutions of less importance to the Gada system are the Heriya and Kalu.

Apart from their political significance, the Gada leaders also have important roles in resource management. While rules and regulations laid down by the Gada tradition must be respected by all local level councils of elders, any problem regarding resource use and maintenance which could not be solved by these elders would be handled for resolution by the higher Gada leaders. Likewise, the age-set Heriya which serves military purpose and the Kalu which is a religious institution do not play any active role in economic management. This is the function of local level institutions, the subject of the next topic.

There are other forms of local voluntary organisation which the Oromo use for insurance. There are idirs at the PA level in which men and women are members. Idirs organise people to help each other during crucial periods such as death and weddings. Women’s idir collect butter for weddings. Idir also makes easy to renew things if there are accident or other misfortunes. If a house burns down all idir members have an obligation to construct a new house; if cattle get sick or have accidents the members slaughter and divide the meat and then they pay money to the owner at a fixed time. The usual amount for an ox is 200 Birr, for a cow 180 Birr, and for a young bull or heifer 80 Birr. Among the Arssi Oromo most people belong to idir; membership may range from 45 to 140 and the average contribution is 2 Birr per Month. Idir money will be paid out when someone dies. If a husband or a wife of a member dies, 300 Birr will be paid to the widower. For the death of a son a doughtier, the member will be paid 150 Birr; if the member was told the passing of close relative (merdo ) the rate varies between 30 to 50 Birr. The idir of the Arssi Oromo women is traditionally known as Wijjo. The idirs of each balabala of the Arssi Oromo gives services and advantages to lineage members when the members have to pay guma ( blood compensation), Gabara (bride-wealth) during marriage, and when imprisoned or penalised by a court. The Wijjo is organised by the Arssi Oromo women on the same lineage basis for the similar objectives. Sadete is idir for Muslims which is used to organise coffee ceremonies and snacks (kurse).

       

There are credit associations (equb ) which they use for economic security at times, economic and social crisis. Every member pays a fixed amount of money. There is judge to supervise and administer rules and regulations. The sum of money collected from each member goes by chance to one member every week so that the opportunity rotates every week to each member until all the members have an equal’ chance.[xvi] The money obtained from equb by the women are used either for their own private purposes such as buying cloth for themselves or as additional expenses for family necessities in the household. Their husbands cannot dictate how they use the money. It is their right to use it for any thing they need. It can be invested in the farm or education based on the willingness and decision of the females. If the women want, they can discuss with their husbands how to use the equb money. There are religious associations (Mahber) in which they prepare feasts in rotation but also help each other during serious problems such as crop failure, accidents such as fires burning houses and crops, etc. Members of Mahber are mostly Orthodox Christians.

People from outside the PA can become members of idirs and Mahber but not equb. Generally members of equb are local people. Idir is a crucial association for wedding (marriage) and mourning. Like in all other places in Ethiopia, Among the Arssi Oromo any person irrespective of age, sex, and ethnicity or wealth difference can be a member of an idir. Mahber is exclusively a religious association for the believers in Orthodox Christianity in the name of Saints. The equb, and Mahber are associations through which the people in the PA practice collective actions and reciprocity. Mahber particularly can be considered as a form of redistribution. For the Arssi Oromo, forms of collective action, reciprocity and redistribution, (with out formal disciplines and regularity ), are practised through feasts that can be prepared during sadaqa ( a feast prepared by wealthy person for the poor at any time), Mowlid ( the birth day of a prophet Mohammed), and Arefa (Id Al Fatir).

References

1.      Africa Confidential, (1994) 1 April, 1994, Vol. 35, No. 7, P.5,

2.      Asmerom Legesse, (1973) Gada: Three Approaches to the Study of an African Society, New York,  Mohammed Hassen, (1990) The Oromo of Ethiopia: A History, 1570-1860 Cambridge, pp. 10-16.

3.      Bahru Zawde. (1992) Military and Militarism in Africa: paper presented at the Seventh General Assembly of CODESRIA, Dakar, 10-14 February 1992.

4.      COR 1994 Draft of the Ethiopian Constitution Approved by the COR Miazia 25, 1986.

5.      Crummey, D, (1975), Society and Ethnicity in the Politics of the Christian Ethiopia during the Zamana Masafent, International Journal of African Historical Studies, VIII, 2 pp. 266-78.

6.      Doornbos M. 1991 Linking the Future to the Past, Review of African Political Economy, No.52, p 53),

7.      EPRDF (1994:a) Abyotawi Democracy, Sene, 1986, No. 72,

8.      EPRDF, (1994:b) Abiotawi Democracy, June 1994, No. 72; Mahtot (a publication of the Amhara Peoples' Democratic Movement, a member organisation of the EPRDF Coalition),

9.      EPRDF, (1994:c) Abiotawi Democracy No. 8 and The Position of Revolutionary Democracy on the Eritrean Question and Unity P.23 May 1994

10.  Hutchful, E (1992) The International Dimensions of the Democratisation Process in Africa, paper presented at the Seventh General Assembly of CODESRIA, Dakar, 10-14 February.

11.  Kinfe Abraham. (1991) Why the Dergue failed: The lessons of failure (Part III Humanitarian), The Ethiopian Herald, vol. XLVII, No. 254 26 & 27 July 1991, p. 2.

12.  Norwegian Observer Group (1994) The 1994 Elections and Democracy in Ethiopia: Report of the Group, Norwegian Institute of Human Rights: Human Rights Report: August p.5.

13.  Osaghae EE, (1991) A Re-examination of the Conception of Ethnicity in Africa as an Ideology of Inter-Elite Competition, African Study Monographs, 12 (1) pp. 43‑ 60.

14.  Ranger, T (1985) The Invention of Tribalism in Zimbabwe (Gweru,), p. 4.

15.  Taddesse A.M. (1994) The Second Woyane Movement 1975-1991. Thesis submitted to the History Dept, AAU. as a partial fulfilment  for a BA Degree in History.

16.  Tamrat Taddesse (1988) Processes of Ethnic Interaction and Integration in Ethiopian History: The Case of the Agaw, Journal of African History, 29

17.  Tamrat Taddesse (1989) Ethnic Interaction and Integration in Ethiopian History: The Case of the Gafat, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 21;

18.  TGE (1992) The Transition Period Charter Ethiopia .....

19.  The Ethiopian Herald (1994) The Down of Democracy, Wugagan, Ginbot, 1986, Special issue, and A successful Transition, (editorial) June 4' 94.

20.     Turton, D, (1972) The Social Organisation of the Mursi: A Pastoral Tribe of the Lower Omo Valley, South-West Ethiopia, PhD Thesis, Oxford, p. 302.

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[i]      This is brought out forcefully in Eboe Hutchful, "The International Dimensions of the Democratisation Process in Abyssinia", paper presented at the Seventh General Assembly of CODESRIA, Dakar, 10-14 February 1992.

9 In Analect 2.3, Confucius says, ‘If you lead the people by means of regulations and keep order among them by means of punishments, they will be without conscience in trying to avoid them.  If you lead them by virtue and keep order among them by ritual, they will have a conscience and will reform themselves’.

10 This point is made powerfully by Vaclav Havel in his essay, ‘the Power of the Powerless’ reprinted in Living in Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1986).

[ii] For this see, Donald Crummey, Priests and Politicians. Protestant and Catholic Missions in Orthodox Ethiopia 1830-1868 (Oxford, 1972), Ch. II.

[iii] Taddesse, Church and State, pp. 108-118.

[iv] Merid Wolde Aregay explores one dimension of this phenomenon in his Literary Origins of Ethiopian Millenarianism, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Ethiopian Studies (Moscow, 1988), pp. 161-72.

[v] Taddesse A.M. (1994) The Second Woyane Movement 1975-1991. Thesis submitted to the History Dept, AAU. as a partial fulfilment  for a BA Degree in History.

[vi] One of the major contributions of Christopher Clapham's sober analysis of the Mengistu era Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, Cambridge, 1988 is its documentation of the Dergue's achievements in this regard.

[vii] A pseudonym carefully selected to symbolise two generations of opposition to the Haile-Sellasse regime, that of the "father", Takkala Walda-Hawaryat, who battled the emperor with singular determination until his death in 1968, and of the "son", Tilahun Gizaw, who was murdered by the regime in 1969, in the wake of the government hysteria provoked by Wallelign's paper, Entitled "The National Question (`Regionalism') in Ethiopia", the piece soon became the gospel of the Ethiopian student movement and the left.

[viii] And yet it was the Eritrean insurgency, not the south, that provoked the issue. Ultimately and ironically, the Eritrean problem was resolved outside the framework of national self-determination which Tilahun Takele took so much pains to construct for it.

[ix] For the manipulative potentialities of ethnicity, which in Ethiopian parlance is only known in its elevated edition of "the national question", see Doornbos, p. 58.

[x]  Abdoulaye Bathily, "Pouvoirs et dynamiques de changement politique en Afrique: de l'Ere pré-colonial aux Indépendances", paper presented at the Seventh General Assembly of CODESRIA, Dakar, 10-14 February 1992, pp. 2-4.

[xi]  Ibid., pp. 4, 7-13; J.-F. Bayart, "La problématique de la démocratie en Afrique noire. `La Baule, et puis après?'", Politique Abyssiniaine, no. 43 (October, 1991), p. 8.

[xii]  Bayart, p. 9.

[xiii]  For the details, see Bahru, Modern Ethiopia, pp. 124-28.

[xiv]  Hussein Ahmed describes these events in detail in his yet unpublished paper, Islam and Islamic Discourse in Ethiopia (1973-1993), paper prepared for the 12th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies; I am grateful to the author for permission to refer to his paper.

[xv]    Note that Gada mean one of three things. It may represent the whole institution of Gada, or one specific period of Gada leadership or the sixth stage of age-grade system. It is distinguished in the context it is used.

[xvi] For example, for equb whose members are 30, the chance for every member to get the sum of the money collected each week from every member has to rotate for exactly 30 weeks. The women who get money from equb have the right to use it for anything they need.